NBC turns 100 next year and wants to make the most out of a robust lineup of tentpole content – particularly sports – that it has teed up for 2026.
On Wednesday NBCUniversal unveiled a suite of advertising tech and data offerings, including ones that allow advertisers to more closely align their brand and message with engaging fan moments during live event action – and to both prove and extend the impact of ad investments in and around key live programming like sports.
NBCU held a press briefing where executives shared more details about the latest advancements in advertising, including - for the first time - the ability for brands to contextually target live programming in real-time. (To learn more about NBCU’s newly announced ad format for Peacock and programmatic buying access for Pause Ads, read here).
AI-powered contextual tool enables the ‘targeting trilogy’
Contextual targeting is a method that allows advertisers to target viewers based on the content they’re watching and, if desired, tailor messaging to the programming so that it resonates and feels like a more natural fit.
Contextual ad targeting isn’t new, but the concept has gained traction in the CTV space. And where some have gotten more granular in the capabilities, including with metadata attributes that go beyond simple categories like genre to target and align against characteristics like mood, tone or actor, for example. That can be seen with scene-level targeting enabled by Wurl on the Viant DSP, as well as new contextual CTV tools offered by Gracenote, for example.
But with live content – and sports in particular – that’s considered tentpole inventory and attractive to ad buyers, NBCU’s latest AI-powered capabilities are quite notable as an advertiser’s ad or creative can automatically align with key moments as they unfold in real-time. It also has applications for news programming.
Speaking to reporters during a press briefing, Ryan McConville, EVP and chief product officer of Advertising Products & Solutions at NBCUniversal, said that the latest advancements in AI have made contextual targeting really compelling and that new models allow continuous analysis of content, “fulfilling the targeting trilogy” of serving the right ad to the right person at the exact right time.
Part of that comes from investments in NBCU’s ID graph and the FreeWheel SSP ad server and tech, where the AI-powered contextual piece brings in another layer of personalization and relevance.
The live custom contextual targeting tool, dubbed Contextual Targeting in LIVE, will be available next year, but NBCU is already using and testing it for video on-demand assets and use cases.
Before getting into the live piece, here’s a little about the use-case for VOD content, which is live today and a bit easier from a tech perspective in the sense that an advertiser could schedule to align creative with a moment in on-demand content ahead of time – whereas showing up next to that game-winning touchdown needs to happen on the fly.
How it works – beta test for VOD content
According to McConville the new contextual targeting capabilities couldn’t be done without AI.
He shared a beta test example with a luxury brand that wanted to target content that contained environmentalism or earth conservation themes, with the objective of boosting awareness and strengthening the brand’s association with their campaign message Previously, NBCU would have had to go through tens of thousands of hours of its library VOD content assets to find those themes.
But with AI, it can plug the advertiser’s themes into the system and AI performs a real-time search within NBCU’s content asset library to find them and pull out information like series names and content IDs, which can then be loaded into an ad server for an advertiser to target.
While NBCU’s ID graph is part of the picture, contextual targeting or that based on content is also seen as a way to avoid privacy concerns and increase the addressability of content for advertisers when privacy rules restrict signals around individual identity.
As for the results? McConville said in initial VOD beta tests, brands saw significant increases in engagement and favorability from viewers, ultimately improving outcomes for advertisers.
And for the luxury brand beta campaign specifically it saw the following results:
+27% higher enjoyment of the creative vs. baseline
+14% agreement that surrounding content enhanced the brand’s message
+10% higher Unaided Brand Awareness vs. baseline
+38% perception of the luxury brand as environmentally responsible
+56% higher search engagement vs. competitive streaming
Contextual targeting goes real-time
Now what’s really neat and teed up for 2026 is the ability to do this in real-time on digital linear feeds (so live sports on Peacock, or live linear channels delivered digitally by a service like YouTube TV – but the capability is not available on traditional linear TV that’s distributed via transport like coaxial cables or satellite rather than digitally over-the-top).
There are two primary initial use cases NBCU sees for this and the first is aligning with key moments or plays in live content like sports.
When advertisers invest in live sports, they don’t just want to be in an NFL game, McConville said, but want to be in the exact moment, like when a touchdown is scored, or a game-tying three-pointer is made in the NBA.
With NBCU’s Contextual Targeting in Live, advertisers can select high-impact and emotionally charged moments when there’s likely to be the highest engagement with the content by viewers, to resonate at that time.
Since what will happen in say an NFL game isn’t known beforehand, the AI-powered tool scans live content in real-time, with metadata information sent to ad servers in seconds, according to McConville.
A demo NBCU shared with reporters used the example of an NFL game, where the AI tool scans and identifies information like the sports team, talent on field and more. The example showed a fumble on the field by one NFL team and in the first commercial break ad pod a Bounty paper towels ad appeared that actually used a “fumble” reference for its product – making it particularly relevant to the moment and context at the time.
The initial model for this offering focused on solidifying the technical capability of the real-time feed to extract and pass metadata on live content. But with that fundamental piece in place, McConville said brands can react to the moments they want to align with and the creative approach they want to take.
Of course again, what will happen in a live sporting event isn’t known ahead of time, but there are enough common occurrences that in theory, if an advertiser knows its going to buy against live sports content it could build a variety of custom creatives beforehand (think one with a fumble angle, one with a touchdown or three-point shot theme, or a tie-in to an interception or turnover, and so on).
The main point is to connect brands with high-impact, emotional moments in live sports content, which NBCU and its Peacock streamer has plenty to choose from in 2026.
February in particular is a sports-heavy lineup for NBCU with Super Bowl LX, the Milan Cortina Olympic Winter Games, and NBA All-Star Weekend. The company also recently signed a three-year rights deal with MLB that means NBC has full-year sports programming on Sunday nights with a new “Sunday Night Baseball” franchise, alongside NBA and NFL games.
Brand suitability for live news
A second main use case NBCU sees for the real-time contextual targeting in live content relates to brand suitability for news programming.
News is a content category execs acknowledged that many advertisers have shied away from as brands don’t necessarily want to show up next to programming that might be about sensitive topics or evoke negative emotions. But plenty of news programming is not sensitive and can be feel good or engaging community-focused connect.
With the AI contextual targeting tool for live content, McConville said advertisers can input custom instructions on their “brand sensitivity” – ie: themes or other aspects they don’t want to be associated with. The AI tool will track those and as long as they don’t occur, the ad is safe to run against news content. But if live news programming contains elements a brand wants to avoid, the AI will inform the ad server and not place an ad against that content.
McConville said this real-time capability helps unlock the scale of live news programming for advertisers.
Extending the ripples of live event investment impact
Also announced Wednesday is NBCU’s Live Total Impact offering, which is a cross-platform tool that spans the company’s linear and digital properties and is meant to extend and show the impact of investments in tentpole live event content, like sports, beyond the actual game.
As McConville noted, there’s a lot of build up to live events and marketers want to know how that’s paying off and how they can take advantage of their investments beyond the event itself.
NBCU’s new ad tech platform uses real-time viewership during a tentpole events in streaming and linear. It finds audiences that were exposed to an ad during the live event and showed interest (such as visited the advertiser’s website) then reloads those users into the ad server to find the same users and re-target or re-expose them across a broader range of NBCU content and library assets in days following the live event.
Per McConville, part of the idea is that an advertiser can guide a viewer through sequential brand storytelling with multiple, targeted exposures at different times in different places.
He used likened a the live event or first exposure that brings reach to a rock dropping into a pond (ie: initial exposure = big impact), and then with re-targeted follow-up exposures, brands can capitalize on those so-called ripples emanating out from the tentpole event splash, using tech and data to show how their big live investments are working and paying off over time. Part of which involves moving consumers further down the marketing funnel – starting with awareness during the event, then to consideration and eventually closer to conversion with subsequent re-targeting and exposures.
The ability to retarget based on website visits is something that was possible on social, he noted, but with NBCU’s new tool is now available across TV.
In a beta test with a telecom brand, NBCU reported a 10% lift in awareness and memorability compared to control; 77% higher search engagement vs. competitive streaming benchmarks, and a 1.8x greater website visit versus industry benchmarks.
Additionally, “retargeted viewers exposed to in-game ads visited the website 6.8x more than those who were not exposed, showing strong lower-funnel impact,” NBCU stated.
“Our company was built on innovation, and as we enter into NBC’s 100th year, we are pairing the strength of our storytelling with the power of our technology to enhance the consumer experience and prove real-time impact for brands,” said Mark Marshall, Chairman of Global Advertising & Partnerships at NBCU. “Premium video is more valuable to advertisers than ever, and with these new innovations, we are providing solutions clients have been asking for, backed by the power of NBCUniversal’s entire cross-platform ecosystem – setting a new industry standard for success.”